Watch What He Does When It Costs Him Something

Anyone can tell you he wants a family, works hard and believes in loyalty. Those sentences cost nothing to say over dinner. What you want to see is what he does when those things become inconvenient, expensive or embarrassing — because that's the version of him you'll actually live with.

The good news is you don't need years to find out. Most of it surfaces inside six months if you're paying attention to the right things and not arguing yourself out of what you see.

The people who can't do anything for him

Watch how he speaks to waiters, cleaners, the woman on the phone at the insurance company, his own mother when she's being difficult. Not once, when he knows you're watching. Over and over, when he's tired and running late.

A man's real manners are the ones he uses on people who have no power over him. If he's charming to you and curt to the person clearing the plates, you've just watched the charm get switched on and off with a dial. He can point that dial at you too.

Related: does he have friends he's kept for more than a decade? Not contacts. Friends. Men who'd tell him he's wrong. A man who's burned through every close friendship by thirty-five has a common denominator problem, and it's him.

How he argues

Conflict is the single most useful thing you can observe, which is why it's a mistake to avoid it for the first year to keep things pleasant.

You're looking for a few specific behaviours. Does he stay in the room? Does he attack the problem or you? Can he say "you're right" without three qualifiers attached? Does he repair afterwards without being asked — a real apology, naming the thing he did, no "I'm sorry you felt that way"?

And when he's angry, what happens to his voice, his hands, the doors, the phone in his pocket? Escalation has a signature. You'll see it long before it's aimed at you.

What goes wrong: women often read stonewalling as calm. A man who goes quiet for three days isn't self-controlled. He's punishing you and calling it composure. That pattern doesn't soften with a wedding, a mortgage or a baby. It hardens.

Any physical intimidation — a fist near a wall, a hand on your arm to stop you leaving a room, driving fast to frighten you — is not a rough patch. It is NOT a grey area. Leave and tell someone.

Money, before it's joint

You don't need his balance sheet on the third date. You do need, before you merge anything, an honest picture of what he owes, what he earns, how he spends and whether he can talk about all three without getting defensive or vague.

Vagueness is the signal. Debt is a fact and facts can be worked with. A man who deflects the question, or gives you a different answer each time, is telling you he's either ashamed or dishonest, and both are things you'd want to know.

Watch the pattern, not the number. Does he spend to feel better? Does he lend money he can't spare to be liked? Does he treat a windfall as a plan? Someone earning modestly who saves steadily is a safer bet than a big earner who's always one bad month from trouble.

When you're getting close to combining finances, a session with a financial adviser or a premarital counsellor who covers money properly is worth the fee. Most of the arguments come from unspoken assumptions, not numbers.

Follow-through on small things

Big promises are easy. Watch the small ones.

He said he'd call Thursday. Did he? He said he'd fix the gate. Is it fixed? He said he'd stop at two drinks. Did he?

Reliability isn't romantic and it's the whole ballgame. A man whose word holds on Tuesday afternoons will keep it when it matters, because there's no separate reservoir of integrity he saves for the important occasions. It's the same tank.

The flipside: grand gestures used to paper over a pattern of not showing up. Flowers after a missed dinner, a weekend away after a bad month. If the apology is always more impressive than the change, you're being managed.

His idea of what a marriage is

Ask directly, early, and don't accept a warm generality.

Who does what at home? What happens if your career takes off and his doesn't? What does he think about you working, or not working, after children? What did his parents' marriage teach him, and which parts is he deliberately not repeating?

A man who's thought about this will have real answers, including uncomfortable ones. A man who says "we'll figure it out" has usually figured it out already and assumes you'll agree.

If faith matters to you, this is not a compatibility detail to sort out later. It's a foundation question. A man who's willing to come along to church to please you is not the same as a man who'd go on a Sunday you were away. Ask him what he actually believes and what he'd want your children taught. Mismatch here is survivable, but only if you both know it's there and have agreed how to handle it. Discovering it in year six with a toddler is much harder.

What kind of father he'd be

You can see this before there are any children.

How is he with his nieces, his friends' kids, the neighbour's boy? Does he get down on the floor, or does he perform for the adults? Is he patient with a child who's being tiresome? Does he see the work — the nappies, the school run, the two in the morning — as help he's offering, or as his job?

Watch him with animals and with anyone elderly. Tenderness towards the weak isn't sentimentality. It's the raw material of a decent father.

The things people talk themselves out of

Certain problems don't improve with love, time or marriage. They get managed, or they get worse.

• Drinking that already causes trouble. Missed mornings, lost phones, personality change. Not a phase.
• Contempt. Eye-rolls, mockery, the little digs delivered as jokes with your friends listening. Contempt is corrosive and it's usually the first thing to appear and the last to leave.
• Lying about small things. Where he was, what he spent, who texted. Small lies are practice.
• No trajectory at thirty-plus. Not about income. About whether he's building anything at all, or waiting.
• Isolating you. Discouraging your friendships, your family, your work. It rarely looks controlling at first. It looks like he wants you to himself.

If three people who love you have gently raised the same concern, stop defending him and ask them to be blunt. You've lost the ability to see it. They haven't.

The test that's easier than all the others

Notice who you are around him. More generous, more honest, more like yourself on a good day? Or quieter, more careful, running a small constant calculation about his mood?

That calculation is expensive and you'll be paying it for decades.

Nobody good is perfect, and waiting for perfect is its own kind of cowardice. What you're looking for is a man who tells the truth, keeps his word, does hard things without applause, and gets better rather than worse when life presses on him.

Go and see him on an ordinary Tuesday. That's not a preview of the life. That is the life.